Present Over Perfect: Part 3

“Or maybe authority: owning one’s life, for better and for worse, saying out loud, ” This is who I am, this is who I’m not, this is what I want, this is what I’m leaving behind” (101).

“What I’m learning is that you have to stop doing a whole lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you really are” (101).

“You were made by hand with great love by the God of the universe, and he planted deep inside of you a set of loves and dreams and idiosyncrasies, and you can ignore them as long as you want, but they will at some point start yelling” (103).

“We get to decide how we want to live” (103).

“But it’s only when we’re truly alone that we can listen to our lives and God’s voice speaking out from the silence” (105).

“And I know that should is one of my warning signs-that frequently I pay more attention to how I should feel about something than how I actually do feel about it” (116).

“And yet I do believe that if you’re asking for help, for guidance, you’ll receive it, and it might come in a different way than you expect” (118).

“Sometimes brave looks more like staying when you want to leave, telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject” (125).

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good” (John Steinbeck, 127).

“It’s about rejecting the myth that every day is a new opportunity to prove our worth, and about the truth that our worth is inherent, given by God, not earned by our hustling” (128).

“It’s about learning to show up and let ourselves be seen just as we are, massively imperfect and weak and wild and flawed in a thousand ways, but still worth loving. It’s about realizing that what makes our lives meaningful is not what we accomplish, but how deeply and honestly we connect with the people in our lives, how wholly we give ourselves to the making of a better world, through kindness and courage” (128).

“Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairy tale” (130).

“Present over perfect living is real over image, connecting over comparing, meaning over mania, depth over artifice. Present over perfect living is the risky and revolutionary belief that the world God has created is beautiful and valuable on it’s own terms, and that it doesn’t need to be zhuzzed up and fancy in order to be wonderful” (130).